Christopher Riley, Author/Screenwriter: It's not a formula it's not paint by numbers
but it at least is a way to say here's how I'm going to start my work today.
Film Courage:
Before you and Kathy wrote the defining moment what was your process for writing characters?
Christopher: Kathy and I approach character from lots of different angles because characters are
slippery critters that you know have a lot of facets a lot of dimensions
for many years we have asked these questions about what are the moments that define these characters
so that's a really important part of what we've always done we also we have a set of what we call
the hero questions where we ask things like what does this character want because every character
is driven by by some intention and then we ask how does this character need to grow and change
because the most interesting characters very often do transform in some way or
even adjust not all characters and all genres transform but often there's at least a small
growth or adjustment in them and that's that's satisfying that's where some of the emotion comes
from for the audience we ask what terrible thing will happen if the hero doesn't get what they want
and that helps us zero in on the stakes of the story for the the external stakes
and we ask what terrible thing will happen if they don't grow and change
in the way they need to and that gets at the internal stakes and we ask how's the audience
going to relate to this character what are they going to be rooting for in relation to this
character because we're really convinced that if we are not rooting for our protagonist we're not
going to be invested emotionally in the outcome of the story and so if we don't care we're bored
we also we've got a list of character qualities that I've stolen from my friend Dr. Sydney Showers
and so I call those Dr. Showers eight character traits and she is a list she's a
gifted writer who's just compiled this list of character traits and they include some of the
things that are included in the hero questions but she asks some other things she asks about a
character's drive and by that she means what is that motor even outside of the specific problem
that's being solved in this movie there's a killer asteroid headed toward earth and so our goal is to
save the earth what drives that character the rest of the time
are they a person who's all about protecting people
throughout their lives everywhere or is it about they're driven by recognition and so I want to
save the earth because it'll make me famous and so that's that's the idea of the character's drive
she thinks about the character's genius and her idea is that every character has
some strength or genius whether it's high IQ or in the case of Forrest Gump it's
not high IQ but it's purity of love purity of heart could be your great cello player
it's it's something that is a strength a character has and then she thinks about
characters flaw and also their weakness as two different things the weakness she thinks of as
just an inability to do something I don't write comedy that's my weakness I'm sure
one element in a very long list the flaw she thinks of more as a moral failure
a person's proud cruel selfish fearful something
all of all of these are just questions that prompt me prompt Kathy to think about our characters
and then we also get some insight into our characters by letting them talk so
when I was writing with Kathy our german film after the truth
that's a movie that's about the Auschwitz doctor Joseph Mengele and
I knew that I needed to capture his voice as part of his character what kinds of things does Mengele
say and so I sat down one afternoon and I just kind of wrote a rant in his voice I just sort of
allowed myself to inhabit that character I read everything I could find out about him every word
that we knew he had written and and I inhabited that character and just wrote in his voice
and I wrote a lot it wasn't dialogue it was more of a kind of a blog post from Joseph Mengele
and and then I whatever the opposite of inhabited disinhabited that character
and I never went back in there but I was able to just go back to those pages
of journal entry or blog post in that character's voice as kind of a tuning fork that allowed me to
write in that character's voice and I've done that for other characters as well as a way of
pinning down a character's voice and being able to then draw on that
it's almost I don't know anything about making sourdough bread but I think that
you've got this starter and you just you keep you just need a little bit of it to get
the dough going and that's how that works you've got that starter and that allows you then to
write dialogue for any scene from that character it's it's a messy iterative process
often I will think about a character as I'm going to sleep at night
and I’ll wake up and have some new insight into them I really think that it's just it's we need
different strategies to just get us coming back over and over and over again
to our characters and giving us ourselves the opportunities to make more discoveries about them
and just to go back to this metaphor about the the sourdough starter if I understand it correctly
that you can keep some of the starter still there in a cupboard covered up so it sounds like two
maybe there's with this checklist that's like the starter that you're keeping because you're you're
going to go back to this checklist that you talked about in the book that you have what is it like 20
questions or so yeah so the I don't even know how many hero questions plus if we add Dr. Showers
eight character traits that probably does get us to about 20. yeah right writing a movie especially
or writing a tv series it's a massive project and having a starter is is a big help just a
place to grab that first thread and and start pulling so it's it's not a formula
it's not paint by numbers but it at least is a way to say here's how I'm going to start my work today
and make contact with this character I've for the first time in my life I directed a short film
recently and so I had to write the script I did all of my write it writerly character stuff but
then there were weeks of prep and pre-production casting working with actors and then shooting
which allowed me to just keep coming back to these characters over and over and over again
what I discovered is you keep learning new things every time you sit down with your characters
you learn more and more and more and eventually it's more than you can fit
in the movie so things start overflowing and falling out but far better to come at this work
with this overflowing just richness of character and knowledge about these characters that you
can't even fit it all into the movie I think that's what the audience wants is a real
density of ideas we just keep discovering more and the only way the audience
is going to keep discovering more is if we have before them discovered more and more and more
how has the defining moment changed the way you write characters I think that I began my writing
life as a pretty lazy guy with low ambitions I wanted to be just good enough to get to play in
the game which is ridiculous because nobody who's aiming to be mediocre gets to play in the game
Kathy is much more about let's not do the least we can let's do the most we can
so from the the moment that we learned about defining moments
Kathy has been all about let's do our homework let's really dig into these characters and I've
i've had to grow into the discipline of it and as I've as I've been willing to invest the effort
into spending time to really deeply understand my characters rather than rushing ahead because
I can't wait to write that scene where the thing blows up my writing gets better and deeper
so I'm excited now every time I approach a new character because I am I'm just asking I'm asking
all these questions and requiring myself not to rush ahead but to take the time to really enrich
the characters enrich the script the script I'm writing right now I'm actually in a rewrite
process where I'm I paused and did all this defining moment work because I felt like a
hypocrite you know having written the book I need to actually do this made wonderful discoveries
and I'm now in the process of of enriching the script with all of those insights
so for me it's it's made my writing I think objectively better richer more emotional
and the character is just more interesting so when you you first started as a writer what were some
of the characters what were some of the the films that you wanted to emulate aside from
you know we talked about ordinary people yeah so besides ordinary people the deer hunter was
also a film that was very influential on me and then this is completely from a different genre
raiders of the lost ark that's just for me so much fun Steven Spielberg really understands how
to tell a story with action it's not random action and we are really with the character
in the midst of it we understand what's going on what has to be achieved what all the threats are
and then he tumbles you in that film out of the frying pan into the fire time after time you end
one action sequence and you tumble into the beginning of the next one so that one for
me is just a lot of fun and teaches me the movie movie going can be fun it doesn't have to just be
you know this emotional ripping open of the soul the elephant man is a film that I really love and
a real character study a study of the connection between two characters who are very different and
in that movie it's the audience that's transformed so the first time that the elephant man is seen
on screen we like cover our faces and turn away and horror at his hideousness
he doesn't change but by the end of that movie we are like on a close shot of his face
and all we can see is his beauty he didn't change but we changed and I love
that film that story can do that that it can change what we see.